


i am a leaf on the wind

by Sanctuaria



Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [19]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Groundhog Day, Angst, Child Abuse, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nathaniel Malick getting his ass whooped, Period-Typical Homophobia, Season 7 finale, St. Agnes Orphanage (Marvel), StaticQuake, Team as Family, because we all need more of that in our lives, but more like a glimpse into AU universes, in which one of Daisy’s regrets was erased, technically not an AU because this is canon compliant, yes I was inspired by the Framework sue me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26734627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: Lying frozen on the floor of the Zephyr, Daisy gets a glimpse of the lives that could have been.(7x13 compliant)
Relationships: Jiaying & Skye | Daisy Johnson & Cal Zabo, Lincoln Campbell/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Miles Lydon/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Skye | Daisy Johnson & Agents of SHIELD Team
Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764745
Comments: 22
Kudos: 73
Collections: AOS AU August 2020





	i am a leaf on the wind

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, this is me _very_ late for AU August with something that is not quite an AU but kind of many AUs rolled into one? I don't even know. 
> 
> Biggest of thanks to independentalto for her beta work; ily Serena. Title credit goes to _Firefly_.
> 
> Trigger warnings at the bottom, please read them first if needed.

Her eyes connect with Coulson’s, up on the ramparts. The lights from the domes, criss-crossed with spider webs of metal filament across their surfaces, reflect off of them, and Daisy can see how much he doesn’t want to leave her. The father she never had, and has always had, when she needed him most.

But he does leave.

He has to.

They _all_ have to.

Everything has led to this moment, this battle, this final showdown. Two timelines, HYDRA, Jiaying, Cal, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Centipede Serum he forced her to take instead of saving his life a year ago that courses through her veins even now. It may kill her, but if that is the price of saving the world, saving her friends, saving her _family_ , Daisy will pay it anyway, knowing she is not the first to have done so, nor will she be the last. _Victoria Hand, Trip, Lincoln, Mace, Coulson himself…_ She is Daisy Johnson, Quake, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and she is well-acquainted with what it means to sacrifice.

Also, she just wants to kick Nathaniel Malick’s smug little ass and then blow him to kingdom come.

“Do you think you're winning?” she goads him, knowing she needs time to let Coulson and the others get away. “‘Cause I can't tell.”

“It's a close one,” he leers at her, palms open and ready at his sides, “but I could go all day.”

“Good,” Daisy says. “That's what we were hoping for.”

The first fragment of panic touches his face, turning his leer into a scowl, vindictive and hateful and all the more mocking because of it. He can’t handle the thought that he hasn’t been beating her this whole time, that she’s been playing him. That she could be _better_ than him. Even the suggestion of it irks some primal, messed up part of him deep inside. “Is that right?”

“Those sparks?” Daisy continues, stalking toward him. His chin remains jutted out, his face twisted in the grotesque half-smile of a man who wants you to know victory is soon to be his, but his eyes are that of a cornered wolf. “That means Kora's purged all the Chronicom data from the planet. Turned the attack to our side. Mission accomplished.”

His jaw clenches, a tell-tale sign of what he’s about to do, but Daisy lets him anyway as he raises his arm and quakes her backward into one of the domes. Her spine slams into the metal filament, and he keeps the quakes coming, pinning her there with crushing force.

She keeps her arms at her sides, and hopes the team has made it off by now. 

Hopes they remember that she said her goodbyes when the worst happens, if they’re unable to reverse it. That this was her choice, and one she would make, again and again, if that’s what it takes to save them.

“Down on the planet,” he says, walking toward her, increasing the frequency of the waves with every step. “But up here…” Nathaniel’s hand meets her sternum, pressing into her, the quakes rattling the very bones inside her chest. “These ships are about to _vaporize_ your friends down below. And you can't stop that.” The vibrations only increase in force. “There is no way to kill me without killing yourself.” He raises his other hand, the palm aglow with the bright golden nimbus of Kora’s power. She can feel the heat of it from a foot away, but he’ll never get to use it.

Her fingers close slowly around his outstretched arm as she reaches deep inside of her where her power resides. She has been savoring it, mining it all fight like May had taught her so long ago to do with her hurt and anger and fury. Daisy’s let just enough escape to counteract his waves of power, to keep them from shattering her bones, but the rest has been held in, coalescing, building, her entire body buzzing with the withheld force. Her insides are taut like a drum, a swarm of a million bees fit to burst.

_“Is it true that you're an Inhuman?”_

_“Powerful enough to bring this whole damn place down.”_

Her eyes rise to meet his, just before she lets go. “That's the idea.”

Daisy releases it in one massive, ongoing quake, like pulling the stopper on a dam. The waves of force expel from her in every direction, suspending her in midair with her arms and head thrown back. The storm of power is unceasing, unending, even as Nathaniel is blown backward almost in slow motion, the domes behind him bursting open in a blast of flame and fire, swallowing him whole.

The sound reverberates in Daisy’s head—more explosions, the hiss and then rush of air escaping the ship. She dangles for a moment before the force of the explosion catches her, tossing her around like a rag doll. The bright lights spin around her, lines of fire seared onto her retinas, and then all is cold.

All is silent.

The Chronicom ships continue to explode around her, but her face is upturned now, looking up at the stars.

The sky.

It’s beautiful.

 _This is the day it all ends,_ Daisy thinks, remembering Robin. _And I’m okay with that._ It’s not that she doesn’t have regrets, because of course she does, but somehow it’s all brought her here, to a chance to save the Earth and everyone she loves.

And sometimes, heroes have to die alone. That’s just how it works.

_Lincoln died alone in space too._

* * *

“We _can’t_ get a dog.”

“But Lincoln…” Daisy whines, flipping over on her side and giving him her best puppy eyes.

“Daisy,” he smiles. “Who would take care of it while we’re on missions, or keep it from getting into trouble in the lab?” He pokes her in the stomach, a small spark of electricity jumping from his skin to hers right in her most ticklish spot, making her giggle and squirm away. “What if May trips over it on the way to the cockpit? She only just started relaxing the death stares around me, you know.”

She scrunches up her nose. “FitzSimmons?”

“If it was a monkey, maybe, they might agree.” He turns onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, drawing her close with one arm until her head is tucked against his shoulder, fingers tracing absently over the smooth skin of her hip. “We can’t, until…after.”

“After?” Daisy asks, brow furrowing. “After…what?” He’s silent. “Lincoln, are you talking about leaving S.H.I.E.L.D.?” His hand tightens on her hip, and she knows that means yes. But he knows what this agency means to her, what the people in it mean to her…how long she spent broken and searching. “S.H.I.E.L.D. is my life.”

“But it doesn’t have to be,” he tries softly. “It can be a job, not a life. Life is what you find outside. We could be like all the other Inhumans, wear a watch, call us when you need us. You could still be an agent, but just…more.”

“They’re my family,” Daisy says, and he twists to look at her.

“I know,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “I know. But they’ll still be your family even if you don’t live on base all the time…that’s what’s good about family. They stay close to you even if you wind up far away.”

Daisy swallows, thinking back to the nuns, the foster homes, the gaping chasm that opened up wider and wider in her chest with every one that sent her back, that said she _wasn’t a good fit_. That she was _unloveable_. “I don’t have a lot of experience with family.”

“I know,” he says again. “But I want…I want to build a life with you, a life that’s more than brick walls and cement and the next mission. I want…”

“Kids?” she asks, barely more than a whisper.

He laughs, breath warm against her skin. “Yeah, maybe, someday.” His fingers lace together with hers. “I want us.”

She tilts her mouth upward toward his and kisses him, warm and gentle and slow. “I want us, too.”

“I love you,” Lincoln says, forehead resting lightly against hers.

“Promise?” she asks, just a hint of uncertainty bleeding through. After a childhood like hers, she can’t not ask. Not yet.

But she’s getting there.

“Always,” he says, and Daisy burrows further into his warmth.

“I love you too.”

* * *

The cold burns.

It sears her skin, what is exposed and what is hidden underneath the Quake suit as if the material offers no protection against the vacuum of space, which, she supposes it doesn’t. There is no air in her lungs, though they try to inflate desperately anyway, fluttering within her chest.

Her vision tinges red and black, pulsating colors as icicles take over her skin.

_“You can’t go through life without regrets,” May told her, fingers threading through her hair. “Regrets are the scars we carry, deep inside. The way we show we lived a life.”_

_“And what-ifs?” Daisy asked, a hand clamped over the bloody bandage on her neck._

_“Those either. They come with every choice we make.” May’s voice was soft. “Don’t let yourself drown in either of them.”_

* * *

Her fingers fly across the keyboard, hitting the keys with a ferocity they don’t deserve. The plastic shell of the laptop is hot against her thighs from the processing power required to run the hack, so she takes a split second break to push it off her and shift her sitting position to criss-cross before hunching over it again. She smacks the enter key in frustration as ‘Access Denied’ flashes across her screen.

“ _Fuck_!” Skye swears angrily, and resists the urge to slam the laptop screen closed.

“Locked out again?” Miles asks, setting his own computer aside. The bed shifts as he scoots forward to look over her shoulder at the lines of code.

“Yes,” Skye hisses, frustrated. Scowling, she opens up a new window, intent on trying again. Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D.’s server farm in Indonesia will have less defense…

Miles presses himself closer to her, placing a hand on her knee. “You should take a break,” he says.

“I just started.”

“Yeah, but…” His breath is hot against her ear. “I’m bored.” He presses an open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck. Irritated and not in the mood, Skye shrugs her shoulder, trying to dislodge him, and hunches further over the keyboard.

“C’mon…” Miles whines. “You know you’ll enjoy it, baby.” The hand on her knee slid higher, over and across the thin red lines on her inner thighs.

“I said _no_ ,” Skye says, shoving him off of her.

Miles’s eyes are dark with anger now, all the playfulness gone. “You’re still trying to find that file, aren’t you?”

“What else would I be doing?” she asks crossly, beginning to type again.

“Don’t you think it’s time to…let it go?”

She looks up at him, anger flowing white-hot through her veins. Her life’s search, and she should just— How dare he. How dare— “Let it go?” she demands. “ _Let it go_ , like you let go of _freedom of information_ and the _right to privacy_?” The words are harsh, cutting, going for blood. “ _All_ of our ideals?”

His jawline tightens. “Hey, you’re sitting here in an apartment I bought with that money, with a laptop paid for with that money, using wi-fi that—”

“Yeah, I get the picture,” Skye scoffs. This part of the argument is at least familiar, round and round they go. “Still doesn’t make you any less of a sell-out.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel, you don’t need to live here then,” he says. “Go, pack your stuff, go back to _living in your van_ at twenty-eight—”

“Fuck you, Miles.”

He sighs, looking at the rumpled bedspread. “I don’t—I don’t want you to leave.” Skye snorts a little at that, because of course he doesn’t. They’re all each other has after his stunt got them both excommunicated from the Rising Tide, and both of them have spent too much time alone to ever willingly go back to that again, as messed up as whatever _this_ is. “I just…I don’t get it. What are you expecting to _find_ , after all these years?”

“Answers,” she tells him. At his look, she bites out, “Like we used to look for? Together?”

“Skye…”

“Something that makes this all make sense,” she says, setting the laptop aside. “All the shitty things that have happened in my life, everything at St. Agnes, the foster families… I want to know _why,_ Miles, and I want to know where I come from. This hole in my past, it’s a hole in _me_ , and it’s like a part of me is missing and the only thing that will fill it is finding the answers.” She crosses her arms. “I thought you understood that.”

“I do, it’s just…”

“No,” Skye says, pulling the laptop toward her again. “You really don’t.” She meets his gaze over the top of the screen, forcing her own expression to soften. “But it’s fine.”

“But it’s n—”

“It’s _fine_ ,” she repeats, ending the argument. Because it has to be.

He’s all she’s got.

* * *

Briefly, she wonders if Simmons will remember her.

Remember Fitz, and whatever it is that she has forgotten. (Daisy’s rooting for a baby.)

Because if anyone deserves a fairytale ending after all this, it’s those two, and Daisy’s happy to give it to them. Whatever the cost.

_“Don’t be silly, Fitz; it takes a body about a hundred and twenty seconds to die in the vacuum of space.”_

* * *

Skye twists the rubber band around her finger, staring down at her lap. The band stings against her skin when she snaps it, but she does it again anyway.

“Stop fidgeting!” Sister Margaret admonishes harshly. The nun’s stern glare is piercing. “First impressions are very important, Mary Sue. You know that.” The nun wrenches the rubber band from Skye’s hands, dropping it in the trash can just as there is a knock on the door. It opens before the Sister can reach it, and Skye forces herself to look up at what will be her fifth potential foster family.

“Please, come in,” Sister Margaret invites in a totally different voice, welcoming them inside. The man and woman—and it’s always a man and a woman, because anything else would be _sinful_ —step past the threshold, and Skye examines them with suspicious eyes. The woman walks in first, light brown hair streaked with blonde bound in a braid that falls over her right shoulder, and she wears an elegant dark blue vest that is markedly different from the dresses that foster moms usually wear. Skye likes it; blue is her favorite color, although she thinks she might change it to purple soon.

The man behind her is taller than the woman, with a hard jawline and fluffy hair of a darker shade of brown than his wife’s. He’s smiling at her happily, but Skye knows better than to trust it—they always smile, at the first meeting. Everyone always smiles, and in the end, it doesn’t mean a thing.

“Hello,” the woman says, and a brief flare of hope rises in Skye’s chest. She is Asian too, like Skye, and so maybe she won’t hate her for it, like Mr. Mason.

Skye doesn’t like thinking about Mr. Mason.

“I’m Jiaying,” the woman introduces herself, coming closer and kneeling down to Skye’s level. She glances upward and to the side at the man, and Skye gets a glimpse of the strange lines that cross her face. Scars. “And this is my husband, Cal.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the man says, blinking and swallowing. His voice is low and strangely husky.

“We’ve been looking for you for a long time,” Jiaying continues.

Skye frowns. No one’s ever looked for her before, except when she ran away. Maybe not even then, only she hadn’t had anywhere to run to. “You have?”

“A very long time,” the woman nods. “We’re…” She glances at Cal again. “We’re your parents, and we are very sorry it’s taken us so long to find you.”

The man chuckles. “Now that we have…best day ever.”

Skye just stares at them. All the kids in St. Agnes dream of having a mom or a dad or both show up out of the blue to claim them, but it never happens.

Never.

And certainly not to Skye, of all the kids. The one who is always sent back, pushed down, shut out. The one who is never noticed except when she’s done something bad, something that needs punishment. The last choice, always.

The one no one wants, but is stuck with anyway.

“I’m your mother,” Jiaying repeats, as if worried Skye doesn’t understand.

“…Mom?” The word slips out before she can stop it, and she shrinks away immediately, arms half-rising to protect her face.

But Jiaying and Cal only share that look again, a warmth Skye has not seen from any adult in her gaze. “Yes, _qiān jīn_.” She smiles again, gentle and kind and forgiving and for a brief moment Skye allows herself to hope. She knows better, but she can’t help it.

 _Mom_. She looks at Jiaying, then at Cal. _Dad_.

“Well, this is…unexpected,” Sister Margaret cuts in, and an icy clarity sweeps through Skye’s flesh at the coldness of her voice. Of course the nuns won’t let her go.

But they have to, right? These are her parents.

Her parents.

Parents who wanted her, who spoke to her gently, who smiled at her and searched for her and…

“If this is true…” the nun continues, and Skye looks up at Jiaying, begging her with her eyes to take her away before the nun can stop her, though she dares not voice it aloud. “There is a lot of…paperwork, we should go through first, to verify your identities. A birth certificate, to start.”

“She was born in China; we did not have time to receive the certificate before she was taken from us,” Jiaying replies.

“ _Taken_ from you…” the nun repeats, and it is the same tone she uses when Skye tries to tell her that her last foster father locked her in the basement for two days. _“Don’t be telling tall tales, Mary Sue; he’s a very well-respected man in the community.”_ She grasps Skye’s shoulder with an iron grip. “Right, well, Mary Sue, you should return to the dormitory for the time being—”

“That’s not her name,” Cal says. The words sound strange, desperate, crooning, but Skye forces her lips upwards in a smile for him anyways, wanting him to know that she is grateful that he is defending her name choice. No other foster parent ever has.

“…Skye,” Sister Margaret amends. “Off you go, Skye.”

Skye shakes her head. If she lets Jiaying and Cal out of her sight, what if…what if she never sees them again?

“Our daughter does not wish to go anywhere,” Jiaying says, standing and addressing the nun with a level gaze.

Sister Margaret’s grip on her shoulder turns bruising, and Skye lets out a small gasp of pain.

“You hurt her,” Cal says, only he doesn’t look kind now. Blackness pools in his eyes, his expression full of a rage that Skye associates with beatings and nights locked in a closet. She scrambles away. “YOU DON’T TOUCH HER.” With a roar, the man slams into Sister Margaret, lifting her clear off her feet and throwing her into the wall ten feet away with a sickening crunch.

Skye stands frozen, trying to make sense of the strange, twisted angle of the nun’s limbs, of how still she is, lying there on the floor.

The door flies open, cracking against the wall with a sound that makes Skye flinch. “What on Earth—” Mother Superior demands. Shock suffuses her face, followed by fear, and she beckons to Skye, her voice wobbling. “Mary Sue, come here this instant—”

“THAT’S NOT HER NAME!” Cal bellows, barreling toward her. Skye begins screaming just as they collide, his hands wrapping around the nun’s neck and wrenching her head to the side with a _snap_. Warm hands grab her from behind and Skye struggles, legs kicking, still screaming her head off until something clamps over her nose and mouth. “YOU WOULD TRY TO KEEP OUR DAUGHTER FROM US?”

“Shh,” Jiaying says, her gentle voice at complete odds with the hand stifling her breath. A cold, numbing sensation spreads across her face, filling her body and making her feel sleepy and tired… She bites down on the hand over her mouth with the last of her strength, iron blood filling her mouth and making her want to throw up. Jiaying’s fingers become like claws. “You don’t know what it took to _find_ you,” the woman says, never releasing her grip. Skye’s vision narrows as her heartbeat flutters in her chest; she doesn’t understand why this is happening, except that no adults can ever be trusted…

When Skye wakes up, she is being carried. Strong arms cradle her against their chest, horizontal like a baby. Cal carries her out of the orphanage, through walls coated by blood spatter and over bodies on the floor, large and small alike, the entire time humming a crooning lullaby.

_“Daisy Bell…a bicycle built for two…”_

* * *

Warm metal impacts her back as she bumps into something hard and flat, or maybe she is placed down upon it; she is too far gone to know. Air rushes past her, scaldingly hot on her frozen flesh, even as the what-ifs continue to play through her cold-addled brain…

_What if Lincoln had survived…_

_What if she’d never joined S.H.I.E.L.D., never faced the suffering it caused…_

_What if Jiaying and Cal had found her, in their long search, as she had so wanted as a child…_

_What if Daniel Whitehall had never destroyed her family at all…_

* * *

“Daisy!” Cal calls in a sing-song voice, entering their little house, high up in the mountains where the air is fresh and cool and smells of honeysuckle. “Daisy, I brought your favorite.”

“Technically, I think Gordon brought it,” Jiaying says, wiping her hands on a towel, a fond smile on her face.

“But I asked him,” Cal replies, sweeping the bag forward and presenting it to Daisy with a small bow. “For you.”

She opens it, and then throws her arms around him. “ _Dan taat_ ,” she says. “Thanks, Dad.”

“It will be good dessert…if we ever finish these _yún tūn_ ,” Jiaying says with a stern look at her daughter, who plops back down at the table. After setting down the bag, Cal joins them, the three of them taking thin squares of wonton wrapper, scooping filling inside, sealing the edges with water, and then folding them into shapes. Daisy’s finished _yún tūn_ look like envelopes—or hats, as she had insisted when she was younger and making a mess with her pudgy hands in the filling—Cal’s like fish, and Jiaying’s some intricate shape that Daisy can’t even describe except to say that they are beautiful and nearly impossible to do. Sunlight streams in with the breeze from the open window, and Cal’s foot taps against the ground in time with the song he is humming.

“You’re filling them too full again, Daisy,” Jiaying said, shaking her head.

“I like them full,” Daisy grinned at her. Her mother just sighs, fixing a few of the _very_ overstuffed ones but otherwise leaving the rest alone. When all of the wrappers are gone, they have a veritable pile of _yún tūn_ on the plate in the middle of the table, and Cal starts the broth boiling on the stove. There’s so many that Daisy doubts their ability to eat them all—usually, they’d invite some of the new faces in Afterlife to share a meal with them, Lincoln, maybe, or Alisha, both of whom are still settling in—but tonight is just for them.

Dinner is eaten around that same small table wiped clean of excess flour, _yún tūn_ filled with pork and shrimp and made with their own hands as a family, together. The sun sets outside the window, the mountain wind turning cold and crisp as soon as it’s disappeared over the horizon. The drone of small insects is audible from outside, but they are protected by the screen, and the inside remains peaceful and full of light and laughter, Daisy regaling them with a story about her classes and Cal a story she’s heard many times from back in his time with Doctors Without Borders, a story that makes Jiaying shake her head and look away, reminding her as always that “Your father likes to exaggerate.”

“No, it’s true,” Cal says, looking at his wife. “I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” He smiled conspiratorially at Daisy. “Only, I don’t think she thought the same thing about me, as right at that moment I had misunderstood one of the other doctors and had to be saved from a _very_ incorrect IV push.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t been so distracted…” Jiaying teases, “you would have learned more Mandarin.”

“Nǐ shì wǒ guóyǔ fāshēngguò de zuì hǎo de shìqíng,” Cal replies, eyes twinkling.

They kissed—“ew, Mom! Dad! we’re _eating_!”—before Jiaying serves the _dan taat_ and turns back to Daisy, wearing a more serious expression as she studies her daughter’s face.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” she asks.

Daisy meets her gaze with equal solemnity. Around her neck is the stone pendant on a red string that she has worn since she was a baby, and Daisy’s hand closes reflexively around it. “Yes, Ma Ma.”

“Are you nervous?”

She hesitates, the momentousness overwhelming her for a second. Tomorrow, she will receive her birthright. _Tomorrow, everything will change._ “A little.”

Jiaying comes around the table, hugging Daisy to her chest. The familiar scent of white tea and ginger fills her nose. “I was nervous too, when I was your age, and it was my time to go through the mist.” She pulled back, taking one of Daisy’s hands in hers. “I’ll be with you, the whole time.”

“And I’ll be there when you come out,” Cal tells her, although his eyes are shining. “Ice cream, from that old-fashioned shop next to my office.”

Daisy gives a little, watery chuckle. “Best day ever.”

“We are so proud of the young woman you’ve become,” Jiaying tells her, squeezing her hand. “We have no doubt that your gift is going to be _beautiful_.”

* * *

Pain blossoms in the darkness wherever she has fallen, calling her back. Beautiful, life-giving pain, so sharp it is almost sweet. It tugs her upward, out of the black.

_“Daisy Bell…a bicycle built for two…”_

_“I want us.”_

_“You’re still trying to find that file, aren’t you?”_

_“We are so proud of the young woman you’ve become.”_

Her eyes flutter open, registering light and warmth and sound where there previously was none. Faces swim in the air above her as she takes a shuddering breath, and then another, and she can feel it when her heart restarts, a dull throb in her chest that increases in frequency, newly thawed blood surging back into her muscles.

They are all clustered together above her: Kora, the golden light fading from her hand; Coulson, concern etched on every line of his face, Mack, leaning over her like the big brother she’s never had; and May, staring at her with such an intensity that Daisy’s sure if Kora’s powers hadn’t been enough May could have willed her back to life herself.

She didn’t expect to see them again, the team.

She didn’t really expect to survive, if she’s honest with herself.

Hoped, yes. She’s no longer the broken ex-agent stalking the streets of Los Angeles, starting fights and cracking skulls and begging to be taken out.

But not _expected_.

“Thank you, Kora,” Mack says, his voice thick with emotion.

“This is what we were fighting for,” Coulson whispers, his hand gentle on her hair. She looks from him to May, to Mack, to Kora. She hadn’t expected _them_ either, this team and this family, who had taught her and trained her and sheltered her. Every choice she has made, every wonderful or horrible thing that has ever happened to her has led her to them. It’s not any of the endings and families she’d wished for or imagined, as a foster kid on her eighth home or as an adult alone and shivering in her van at night, but it’s the one she’s found, and more importantly the one she will _keep,_ and _choose_ , over and over again.

Her fingers clutch cold against his, but getting warmer. “ _Family_.”

* * *

_i am a leaf on the wind_

_watch how i soar_

**Author's Note:**

>  **Trigger Warnings:**  
>  Self-harm scars  
> Bf being kinda pushy about sex  
> Christianity-typical homophobia mention  
> Implied murdering of children
> 
>  **Translations:**  
>  Nǐ shì wǒ guóyǔ fāshēngguò de zuì hǎo de shìqíng - _You were the best thing to ever happen to my Mandarin_
> 
> Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Any and all feedback is appreciated :) 
> 
> Also, there is probably only one or two more fics to come in this series (Philindaisy with Daisy as Director and _mayyyybe_ some Deke angst, we'll see) but stay tuned for that <3


End file.
